Wednesday, March 1, 2017

The divine
Thiruvallikkeni, abode of Lord Parthasarathi enthuses people in many ways. Marina beach, Educational institutions, Gosha
hospital, Barathiyar illam and more .. .. .. for many of us 27 Car Street was a landmark !! ~ and
this ever smiling Mandayam Ananthanpillai Srinivasan [fondly Gopu] is a famous
person in Triplicane. For those passing
out in First class were awarded a travel bag – receiving them from the Chief
Guest on Saraswati pooja day was a proud occasion.

Do you
know or heard of William Austin Burt, an American inventor, legislator,
surveyor and more… who invented the first workable solar compass… he touched and turned our lives….. now a days,
you get email communications and SMS messages – no proper grammar, spelling
mistakes, no syntax – not in presentable format … .. a couple of decades back,
life was different - Godrej, Facit,
Remington and Underwood were household names; Tripicane streets were dotted with Srinivas,
Padmavathi, Sarathi, Shivish Halda, Ganesh, Halashyam ………… and more. Be it Mylapore, T Nagar, Purasawakkam or
Mayavaram – situation was no different. One could see young boys and girls
walking with sheet paper rolled .. ..the
learning courses were usually of an hour duration… the last 10 minutes, if you
are to enter the hall, you might be frightened with the silence that precedes
typical sound – keyboards pressed, cylinders moving, carriages returned, occasional paper change… people with total
concentration seeing printed matter placed on their side and deftly moving their
fingers.

It was the backbone
of every office; you could have seen them sitting in front of Courts; Registrar
offices ~ and all important places where documents were the key…. From marriage
certificates – to divorces; property registration and every other service were
documented neatly…. Mostly without mistakes by lowly paid people. In case you are wondering what this is all
about… it is typewriters, typists and typewriting institutes…

Even before Arts
colleges mushroomed – there were typewriting institutes and people rushed there. A stenographer was premium – in great demand,
though the typist to steno ratio in an office could often be 5 : 1 or even
higher. Stenotypists took dictation,
hearing English, took notes in Pitman’s phonetic code and converted them back
to written (typed) English on typewriter – making communication flow. It was a
skill whose value was noted by C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), the south Indian
nationalist leader, who was enthusiastically supportive when the idea of
starting the Steno-grapher’s Guild to teach shorthand and typing, came up
around 1936. South Indian typists were to become so ubiquitous across India
that when Air India did a cartoon map of the country, Madras was depicted with
the image of a south Indian man clicking away at a typewriter. The corridors of
Mantralaya – Central Govt offices in New Delhi reverberated with Tamil typists
and stenographers who came out successful in Public Service Commission
examinations.

I learnt Typewriting
at ‘Srinivas College of Commerce’, ~ 27 Car Street, Triplicane, Chennai
600005 and later honed my ‘Shorthand
skills’ also there. This Institution
shaped the career of many Triplicaniites and ensured livelihood to many more…
really great service by Mr MA Srinivasan [Principal of Srinivasa Institute] and
the batch of vivacious tutors who raised the confidence level of the youngsters
that they sure would get a good job. One could happily recall – Sri – Raghu,
Sundaramurthi, Santhanam; Sampath, JS, Narayanaswami … instructors who changed
the lives of many. Learning Typewriting
(& Shorthand) easily provided job opportunities - more importantly, the
confidence in a workplace.

In
early 1980s it bustled with activity ~ institutes would open at 6 am and would
close by 9 pm with break from 12 noon to 4 pm….. at Srinivas there were 70 odd typewriters and in every batch there
would be so many girls and boys……….. at street corners some groups would stand
waiting to watch those going to typewriting institutes with couple of sheets
rolled in their hands… and inside the institutes
also developed the love-stories of some… an odd smile, a glance, an exchange
from a heartthrob would make you soar !

It was not meant to
be place of romance, though it provided much for many……. Imagine adolescent
girls and boys mingling at a place at a time when you had less of TV
entertainment and practically no social media…. The typewriting Institutes
provided regular stream of typists to all offices – be it small or big……. In
fact Srinivas Institute was an ‘Employment Exchange’ by itself…. … the students
upon graduation would sure get a job in one of the offices – would become close
to indispensable – remember those days were the days of typed correspondence –
letters – interoffice memos; invoices and more all got typed and were being
dispatched by post… once they were to
leave for better pastures, their office would seek for a replacement – they would
come to the typewriting institutes where they learnt the skills, pick up a
smart upcoming person, take them to their office as a replacement………….. and the
cycle would go on.. providing employment opportunities for hundreds
regularly….. life was so sweet and uncomplicated. Parrys Corner housed thousands of offices and
in each office there would be so many clerks, typists and stenographers – all
typing documents speedily without mistakes………….. my first job was gotten so – opportunity
informed through Srinivasa Institute, I walked in for an interview – a day
after finishing my degree exams and joined job the same day in R. Subbaraman
& Co [Cutfast Bonded Abrasives] at Francis Joseph Street, Parrys – next to
Ramakrishna Lunch home.

There were many good
typists who could churn out error-free documents – neatly made on a typewriter ; remember typewriter has no
correcting mechanism and a mistake made would remain to be seen by all….. yet
there were quality typists who could type big statements- multi-pages, which
would then be pasted together … quite an achievement indeed.

William Austin Burt
(1792 – 1858) with his multifaceted
skills was the inventor, maker and patentee of the first typewriter constructed
in America. Burt also invented the first
workable solar compass, a solar use surveying instrument, and theequatorial
sextant, a precision navigational aid to determine with one observation the
location of a ship at sea. Burt had a troubled childhood living in
poverty. His typographer of 1829 is
considered a precursor to the modern day typewriter. The first writing machine
Burt built did not live up to his expectation, perhaps was "born out of
season" and was before its time, so no market was found for his typewriter
or the patent in his lifetime.

This great invention
rose to become one of the most indispensable tools of documentation and paved
way for employment opportunities and for many other ancillary industries as –
typewriter ribbon manufacturing; carbon papers for taking more copies,
typewriter mechanics, cleaners
etc., ‘good things too come to an
end’…. … in the age of templates and
e-documents, the relevance and significance of typewriters will never be
understood as it fell into oblivion…. The makers of typewriters also are no
longer in business… due to falling sales, IBM sold its typewriter division in
1990 to Lexmark, completely exiting from a market. In India, Godrej reportedly
stopped production in 2009 ~ the last pieces were sold around Rs.12000/-
approx….

With love
for Srinivasa Institute and regards to Sri MA Srinivasan and all others who
taught ~ in a tinge of sadness, the building is no more now.